Believe God for Miracles - Romans: Book of Revolution

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So turning your Bibles to Romans 4, and if you don't have a Bible, then use your phone.

Put in Romans 4, it'll come up.

But we've been in Romans 4.

We were last week in Romans 4.

And I want to just say this that Abraham is called the father of our faith.

And when this was written, obviously, what you have in Romans 4 is Paul dealing with a church that's a mixture.

It's a mixed church.

Not unlike, in many ways, our church.

Our church is a mixed church.

And what I mean by that is that some of you come out of church backgrounds.

You grew up in the church.

Some of you did not come out of a church background.

So for some of you, your definition of being a good Christian is related to following the law, doing good things on the outside, which, by the way, is all very, very important.

And you may, you may equate salvation with the good life.

In other words, you're kind of, you're, you're still trying to earn somehow an entrance into heaven.

You know, if I were to walk out here, go down to the mall over here, and just do a survey of ten people, and I said, What gets you into heaven?

I promise you, eight out of ten would say being a good person, not hurting people.

Something along the lines of your works, that your good works.

Because that's the way we're wired.

We're wired in everything to think there's a reward for you doing something.

But Romans 4 kind of comes into the face of that and says, look, it's not that good works save you, it's that faith in Christ saves you, and good works are the result of that salvation faith.

So he's hammering this point home, and we looked at this last week and let's look at it again.

It says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

So, as I've said now, ad nauseum for the last six weeks, that there's this transaction, it's almost like a mathematical equation by which when you accept the fact that you're a sinner and you put your faith in Christ, his righteousness is imparted into you and you are saved and you are forgiven.

Good works or the life of living a righteous life on the outside is the result of a transformation on the inside.

It's not that we are so good, it's that he's so good.

And so when we we understand that we put our faith in him, there's almost like this transaction by which God comes and he imparts all the holiness and all the righteousness of God into you by putting your faith in him.

Now, it's a lifetime of working that out.

It's a lifetime of working that out.

Because the Christian life is really two steps forward and one step back.

There's always more to learn, there's always more power that's available through the Holy Spirit, there's always more holiness, more of a fear of God, less of a fear of man that we have to grow in.

But then there's also this sinful side of us that rises up.

That's what kind of it wrote.

There was a righteous indignation, but there was also a depression in me last night.

And so I had to lean into the promises of God.

So I think that verse three, though it is usually taught from the perspective of salvation, I want to say that it's also taught today, and in and as we move through Romans about sanctification.

You have to keep believing God and having an account to righteousness.

You can't, you don't just do it once.

It's when you come to those really hard times in your life.

It might be a divorce, it might be an affair, it might be an addiction.

I don't know, but something that you're dealing with where you finally have to believe God, not believe in God.

Satan and demons believe in God, but you actually believe God that he's gonna do something great, that he's gonna do something good, that a miracle can occur, there is a transaction by which the righteousness of God is released into your heart.

It's not a feeling, but it's a faith in him.

So let me give you four reasons why I think Abraham is the father of our faith.

First of all, I shared earlier, like a month or two ago, that Abraham came out of, he was called Abram at that time, the Ur of the Chaldeans.

So they're among the Sumerians, not Sumerians, but the Sumerians of that time, one of the most modern cultures of that time, that's what Abraham came out of.

Okay, so he gave that up, Genesis 12, because God spoke to him that his descendants would cover the globe.

I mean, there was no evidence, I mean, it was unheard of.

He didn't have any biographies to read.

Oh, yeah, there was this other guy, and he believed God, and look what God did.

We have that today.

You can you can look up John Wesley, you can look up George Whitfield, you can look up Jim Elliott, I mean, you can look at all these journals and biographies of these great men.

It gives us faith.

Abraham had none of that.

He just had this voice from the Lord, and this I don't think he saw God, but he heard this voice.

He was listening, heard a voice, and then this voice said, Look at the stars in the heavens, so shall your descendants be.

That's crazy, man.

Secondly, he believed God that from his loins, that from him is where the descendants would come from.

It would come from the birth of one child.

There'd be this one child, and from that there'd just be this exponential impact that would affect the whole world.

He believed that.

I mean, look at me, man.

I mean, that's like nuts.

That's like crazy.

He says, Count the stars.

Well, you can't count the stars.

He said, Well, that's what your descendants would be like.

But he believed God.

I mean, that's pretty amazing, right?

So he believed God, and then numerous times we come to this verse 3 in Romans 4.

It's all through the scriptures that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness' sake.

And so here we are today because of Abraham.

He he believed God in spite of what seemed to be impossible.

And then I would say, lastly, and I said it earlier, but I'll just repeat it again.

I think verse 3 also relates to our sanctification.

That we can believe God for miracles in our life, and the same principle applies that we believe God.

I would say religious people believe in God.

People who are walking in the miraculous believe God.

We believe his promises.

That's what Liz was speaking into my heart last night before I went to bed because I couldn't sleep.

I was just so bothered by what's happening in our county.

And it just makes me mad.

And I had to find joy again.

Hey, I'm joyful now.

I just want you to know at least a little bit.

Okay, just a little bit.

All right.

But here, this word is um logozomai.

It's for accounted in verse 3.

Accounted, this particular Greek word is used 41 times in the New Testament, 19 times in Romans, but 11 times in chapter 4 alone.

So this is one of the most important chapters in the Bible about justification by faith, and I'm saying sanctification by faith too.

So look at verse 7.

They're quoting David here.

David writes, Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

So when it talks about lawless deeds, um, David is talking about sins of commission.

Sins of co-mission.

In other words, you know it's wrong, but you do it anyway.

I'm sure nobody knows what I'm talking about.

But you you know that doing this is wrong, you know looking at that is wrong, you know taking this is wrong, but you do it anyway.

And and David, who's the only guy in the Bible who's a man after God's own heart, 1 Samuel 14, 13, is notorious.

I mean, the guy's probably bipolar.

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, he's probably the first bipolar guy in the Bible.

I mean, talk about saint and sinner.

So you have David who goes, and the two things you know about David, right?

Goliath and Bathsheba, right.

Even people who don't go to church know the two stories.

Okay, so Goliath, Saint.

Bathsheba, sinner.

And he's saying here, blessed or happy are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

He knew what he was doing with Bathsheba.

He knew exactly what he's doing, and he did it anyway.

And yet, even David understood the walk of faith from a distance before Christ.

He understood he would he was seeing the Messiah, even without being in that generation where the Messiah came.

Verse 8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.

So that's a sin of omission.

So a sin of omission is when you know the right thing to do, but you don't do it.

That's the problem with culture now.

That's probably that's our situation now, is we have so many believers in Christ who see things and they could be used to make a difference there, but they turn away and they don't do anything.

And so then society continues to be demonized, continues to be satanic, because we're in a spiritual warfare.

And we just had one of our precious officers of the law go off a bridge.

And it was in the paper today, chasing uh another carjacking guy.

I don't know if you guys ever wish this, but I sometimes wish I'd been trained as a Navy SEAL and I could just go take care of business in about one week.

We could clean this place up.

It's not the wild west, though, right?

I understand.

It's not very Christian for me to say that.

And um, but sometimes that's what I want to do.

And say, get saved.

You got five minutes.

All right.

Verse 9.

Does this blessedness then come upon the circumcised only, for upon the uncircumcised also?

For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.

How then was it accounted while he was circumcised or uncircumcised, not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised?

And received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith, which he had while still uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all those who believe, though they are uncircumcised, that righteousness might be imputed to them also.

Now, if you're a guest with us today, we do not talk about circumcision all the time.

But that's what Paul's talking about, because circumcision was so important to the Jews.

It was so important to them.

So you could not go into a feast, a Jewish feast, without being circumcised.

It was the sign of Abraham.

It was the sign of being a Jew.

And so even the Talmud, which is the writings of the interpretation of the law, the Talmud said, if you were a Jew and you went back to idolatry and you died, you went to hell.

And when you went to hell, God uncircumcised you.

So he put your foreskin back on and then sent you to hell.

Now, women, you don't have to worry about that, but I'm talking about for us men.

Okay, so that's how important circumcision was.

It's not that important to us now, but it was important to them.

So that's why he's hammering this point out.

It's not the first time he said this, but here's where he really emphasized it, because the Jews really believed they were the saved one, and the Gentiles, the non-Jews, were not.

And he's got this mixed church.

He's got the Greeks that were in the Roman church, and Romans, and he's got the Jews.

And so he's saying, look, your circumcision doesn't save you.

Well, it's the same here.

Today with baptism.

So I grew up in a Lutheran church with my dad being a pastor, and I was baptized as an infant.

So, how many were baptized as an infant in your church tradition?

Okay.

And some priests and pastors get it right, and they say, look, that's not what saves you.

It's a sign of a covenant of God.

But we have this other thing called confirmation class, and in confirmation, you confirm your faith.

That's where you get saved.

But if you read in the Lutheran hymnal, and by the way, all this is in a hymnal in the old church where I came from, it'd be in the front part of the church.

You got the baptismal.

And when you read what the parents actually say it, I've said to dad, I said, Dad, that pretty much says that you're saying that infant baptism saves you.

And he and I said, Do it, does it?

And he he can't really answer it and everything, and we have these interesting discussions.

And then I, this is in my youthful, zealous days.

I said, Well, then let's just get out of hose, man.

And as people are coming off the train, wherever we are, let's just hose them down and say, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, you're saved.

He said, No, it's not like that.

And I said, I know, but I just thought I would be a little radical on that and just say that.

But um, but I think that's uh that's what we have today.

Back then it was circumcision.

And by the way, there's evidence historically that the early church in the first century did baptize kids as infants.

And the reason was it was a Jewish sect.

So 90% in the first 50 years of the church, 90% of all the believers were Jews.

And they were looking for a seal.

What's the seal?

That's the translation, and they felt, and many Christian scholars would agree with this, that circumcision was a type of baptism later.

So on the eighth day, a Jewish child was circumcised, and then on the eighth day, many Christians began to do infant baptism.

So I have a ton of grace for that.

I'm not gonna get into a debate on that, but the point is, if that's true, what Paul is saying under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit about circumcision, that's also true about baptism.

So we have Marcus Vale.

I don't know if Marcus, and because I are they in here?

Okay, Marcus is our newest staff.

He's this massive guy.

You may have seen him, he's a Samoan in background.

He should be like a left tackle for the LA Rams or something, you know.

But I baptized Marcus four times, and he still wasn't saved.

We were talking about this.

How many times did I baptize you?

You said, Pastor Steve, you baptized me four times.

Well, now he's saved.

I want you to know he's saved now and he's on staff with us, but that came later.

So, so baptism is a public demonstration to people of a private decision that you've made to follow Christ.

But baptism doesn't save you, it's important, it's hugely important.

When we went to Israel the last time, I baptized a ton of you guys in the Jordan River because you want to be baptized there, but that didn't save you just because you went to the Jordan River.

So baptism is a sign.

But here's an interesting part of the verse.

Look at 11a.

Because this is, I've never heard anybody bring this out ever before, but I'm gonna bring it out because I think it's really key.

He says in verse 11, he received, meaning Abraham, he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised.

Now listen to me.

This is really interesting.

What he's saying is the seal, let's just use it to modern times, the seal of baptism is your faith, not the baptism.

In other words, baptism is publicly declaring your private faith in Christ, but the seal by which the Jews looked at circumcision, as important as that is, I'm not, I'm not in any way saying that's unimportant, but that the seal to Abraham was his faith, then he got baptized 14 years later.

But but he was saved.

And that's the point that men and women, your salvation is based in that transaction by which you simply put your trust in Christ.

I'm gonna trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

I put my faith in you, Lord, you forgive me of my sins, then righteousness from God, mystically and supernaturally, is released into your heart and you start becoming a different person.

Then you get baptized.

Or if you were baptized an infant, you can count that as now the seal of your baptism.

But you are already baptized by the seal of faith, and then you get baptized.

And the same with the law, same with being religious, the same with following the law.

So it was 430 years later before the law came.

And yet Abraham is the father of our faith, not the law.

So the law can't save you, the law is evidence that you're a that you're a sinner.

Look at verse 13.

For the promise that he would be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

For if those who are of the law are heirs, meaning the Jews, faith is made void and the promise made of no effect.

Because the law brings about wrath.

For where there is no law, there is no transgression.

Therefore, it is of faith, that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

So the promise made was made to Abraham and is made to us today, not based on the law.

The law came later.

The law shows us that we're sinners.

So Galatians says it so well, Galatians 2.21, I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.

So this makes sense to me.

This should make sense to you.

That if you don't say that the Christian life is a walk of faith and trust in God as your salvation first step and then sanctification as we grow in Christ, then that means you have to earn it, man.

You have to be the best person ever, and all you gotta do is wake up in the morning and you're angry at your spouse.

Boom, guilty.

Then you get in your car and you're driving and some guy cuts you off in traffic, and I'm sure you feel really good about blessing that guy, guilty.

And then you look at a beautiful woman or you look at a handsome man and you lust in your heart, guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty, right?

In other words, if we personally had the capacity to follow the law and save ourselves, then Jesus died needlessly.

We have to have Christ.

I had to have Christ last night.

I had to have my wife bust my chop spiritually and say, believe, trust in the Lord, and it will be accounted to you as righteousness.

I think that sometimes as evangelical Christians, we miss it when we make this idea of believing God and it's accounted to us as righteousness as just for salvation.

It's also for sanctification.

You still need to believe God and let his righteousness come when you're bummed out and when you don't know how this thing's gonna work out, or you don't see how God could ever show up in your life.

Because you can't earn it?

You cannot reform the flesh.

We're all saint and sinner.

We're all saint and center.

We're going to get to that, man.

It's going to be so good.

Romans 6, 7, and 8.

Romans starting a little bit in 5, but then 6, 7, and 8.

You're going to get radicalized by Jesus through those passages.

Because it's all about how to live it, man.

How you proactively and intentionally live the righteousness of God in your life when you don't have what it takes, but He's got everything that you need.

And it sets us free.

And I needed that.

Now, this is all a lead up to verse 17.

Okay, so 17 through 20 is where I want to land the plane more than ever today.

And this is why.

Because I believe God still does miracles.

Do you believe that God still can do miracles?

And when I say a miracle, I'm not talking about, oh, it's a miracle that I found a parking space.

At the strip club.

You think I'm lying.

Look, I've been in this business a long time.

And I know men.

And men are weird, man.

We are.

I mean, we're weird.

I got to speak to a seminar of women yesterday, and I just I told them at the beginning, I said, man, I love women.

I married a woman.

I dig women.

My mom was a great woman.

And I grew up around strong steel magnolia southern women.

They didn't take no crap from no man.

And I don't want you taking crap from men here.

I want you to be strong women.

I want you to walk in submission to God and to your husband, of course.

But at the same time realize that if you've got a jerk of a husband, you need to set him straight.

I'll help you.

I'm here to protect you women, because sometimes you don't have a protector.

And that's part of our job as leaders of this church is that we watch over our women here.

And if we've got anybody in this church messing around with our women, and you don't want to mess with me.

So I say that because what we're going to read now is this work of the Spirit by which God does miracles through faith.

And Abraham is our example.

So look at verse 17.

As it is written, I have made you a father of many nations.

In the presence of him whom he believed, God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.

Now, let me just say this.

Faith is really a choice.

Just because we call ourselves a Christian doesn't mean we have faith for the stuff that we face that's hard.

So you have to make that choice.

So what he's saying, I'm looking at it from a sanctification side.

I think what Paul is writing here is for all time.

It's not just what Abraham did, but there are things in our lives, you guys, that are dead.

They're dead.

But we can call forth life in them.

So here's my first point believe God for great things.

Number one, believe God for great things.

God doesn't do little things.

God does big things.

God does great things through the little ways.

In other words, when you're obeying God and doing the right thing in these little areas, he's actually doing a great work.

Now, what does it mean?

Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteous.

Here's what I think it means.

It means that God can see stuff that you can't see.

He sees stuff you can't see, but if you'll believe him, he'll give you eyes to see what he sees.

So that's what he tried to do with Abraham.

He said, Look, look at the star.

He didn't have any scriptures.

There's no Bible yet.

There's no church yet.

There's no Jewish nation yet.

There's no law yet.

There's no circumcision yet.

All he had was the voice of God.

And he says, Look at the stars.

So he looks up at the stars.

Count them.

Well, I can't count them.

Well, that's how many descendants you're gonna have.

From you.

If you'll believe me, I've got great things for you.

He has no biographies to read.

He has no examples to rely on.

This, I mean, that's amazing.

What Abraham did.

He believed God.

And so, first, realize that God still does that today.

God still wants great things for you.

God still has great things for this county.

God still has great things for this city.

God still has great things for this church.

God still has great things for the front range, but you got to believe God.

Not just believe in God.

We've got to believe God for that.

Great things.

Through us, through the body of Christ.

It really hit me this week.

I was driving in Tuesday morning and I said this to the men.

400 men.

400 men in this room fired up for Jesus.

Probably not everybody, but I'll bet you 95% of the guys in there are pretty fired up.

It took 400 men in the cave of Abdulum with David to rock the nation of Israel to make David king.

God can do a lot with 400.

It was 300 with Gideon.

We're over 300.

We're under 400, about 390, so almost 400.

Look what God could do in this county with 400 men.

Look what God could do through 1,500 people or whatever we are here at the road.

God does great things.

Number two, look at this.

He says, who contrary to hope, in hope, believed, so that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be.

So let me, I skipped one.

Number two, I would say, God, believe God for dead things.

So first of all, believe God for great things.

Number two, believe God for dead things.

What God does this?

That He takes dead stuff and he brings it back to life.

I mean, any other religion has living stuff and then they try to kill it.

But in Christianity, we have dead stuff and he raises it from the dead.

That's what he wants to do in your life.

That's what he wants to do in my life.

I was feeling kind of dead last night, and God began a resurrection.

God wants to resurrect.

You don't believe that that can happen?

It's dead?

Believe God for dead things.

He's in the business of resurrection.

That's his MO.

That's what he does.

Verse 19, and not being weak, let me go back to 18.

Who contrary to hope and hope believed so that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken, so shall your descendants be.

Number three, believe God against hope.

Believe God where you're hopeless.

Are there things in your life that you're hopeless?

Believe God.

Trust God.

Cry out to God.

He wants to give you hope.

And not being weak in faith, verse 19, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was about a hundred years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb.

He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.

Believe God for the unseen.

Believe God for the unseen.

So first, believe God for great things.

Number two, believe God for dead things.

Believe God against hope, and believe God for the unseen.

I mean, Abraham looked at his body, and I'm a hundred years old.

Sarah's a hundred years old.

There's no way we can have a child.

But he believed God, not his circumstances.

He believed God against hope against hope.

Hebrews 11:1.

Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

That's what faith is.

Faith is believing God that he sees what you cannot see, and he's got a bright, beautiful, awesome future for you.

And for these kids that are painted here by Chris Story, when she painted these paintings, nobody cares about them.

Nobody cares about them.

God does.

And he's looking for some people who will believe that God can set them free, to believe that God can give them a future and a hope.

To believe that the promises of God are as true for them as they are for us.

It really matters.

And when we line ourselves up with the heart of God, he releases his power into our lives.

Verse 21, and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was also able to perform.

And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now it was not written for his sake alone, but it was imputed to him.

But also for us, I mean, here we are in the 21st century, but also for us, it shall be imputed to us who believe in him, who raised Jesus, our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.

So here we are today, men and women.

We can pray.

We can believe God because of Abraham's faith.

And because of these early Roman believers who believed in the You see what Christianity did, guys, is it went from Jerusalem, and then it moved up into Antioch, and then it moved across Galatia, and it moved across Galatia and Cappadocia, it moved over into Rome, and then it came across simultaneously across North Africa.

That's where Augustine was a bishop there in Hippo.

And so kind of the area around Libya.

And so it moved across North Africa, and then it moved across Rome.

And at the end of Romans, you're going to see that Paul says, I'm going to Spain, and then it went to Spain, and then it went up into the Franco tribes and the Germanic tribes up into that area.

With guys like St.

Patrick and Boniface into Great Britain.

And then a guy like Thomas, you know, one of the early apostles took the Silk Road and he went to India and then up into China.

And the gospel continues to go forth through brave men and women.

And then we're here.

We're called to be here in this county right now.

And we look at the faith of those men and women who gave their lives to bring the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.

We give our lives today.

In our jobs, and in our county, and in our school system, and we fight for righteousness.

We battle.

We don't become mean-spirited.

We have a soft heart, but we also have a steely spine.

We stand strong, and you're gonna get hit and you're gonna be made fun of, and they're gonna come after us.

But we just keep believing.

Yet just keep believing that God is a God of miracles, that he's a God of the unseen, he's a God of the dead, and he rises it from the grave.

Thank you for listening to the Born for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.